With Shoes Untied
by suncityblues
Summary: It is here, watching the gaps between the car lights grow closer then farther away then closer again that you realize it's not going to work. Conrad/Worth. Completed.


**Title: **With Shoes Untied  
**Characters: **Worth & Conrad; Hanna (can be seen as platonic I guess, but it's not really meant to be).  
**Rating:** Work safe  
**Spoilers: **none, really

* * *

It is here, watching the gaps between the car lights grow closer then farther away then closer again that you realize it's not going to work.

That nothing in your life will ever work.

Everything comes down to a bunch of puzzle pieces but none of them belong to the same puzzle.

And it's odd that this doesn't upset you like it should. You suppose that things have changed, the scope of your life has been dramatically lengthened and suddenly you are no longer connected. No longer meaningless, you have the rest of forever to do something, to be something.

There is no time limit anymore. There is just time.

And somewhere far away he's saying:

Quit pouting faggletooth.

And you're saying:

Fuck off, Worth.

Except he's not really saying anything, because he cannot speak. Maybe never will again. And you're not saying anything either because you don't want to. Because there's nothing to say.

You should have tried harder. Practiced.

And it's all the same and all the same and all the same and it eats you up inside because you know that it's meaningless and tedious and you have come to realize everything is like that and the only thing there is to look forward to is watching life grounded down to make coffee, sometimes strong and sometimes weak but coffee all the same.

And the person laying in that coffin is not the person you once knew because after a certain point people become copies of copies of who they once were. And with each copy they get more and more faded and washed-out until you can't see them at all and the page is just an empty white sheet, with no proof there was ever anything on it besides the quickly disappearing warmth from the machine which it came.

Hanna doesn't smile as much anymore because Hanna is older. He is certainly not smiling now.

You are sitting outside the parlor, smoking Worth's cigarettes. You wonder if he'll be pissed off when he finds out.

But that is unimportant.

You don't want to die and your friends, they don't want to die but they don't have a choice. Not unless you give them one.

You gave him one, you just don't know if he took it.

Since nature can't get you, something else has to.

And you know you shouldn't do this to yourself. Vampires to vampires and humans to humans and so these lines will blur from time to time but rarely does something good come from it.

Rarely does good factor into anything anymore, not since you realized that everything is the same as nothing in the eyes of time, in the eyes of nature, in your eyes. Even the most beautiful things will fade and crumble and be lost and there is nothing you can do about it except wait and watch and wonder why.

Dead, he doesn't look real. More like a wax mannequin than a person, as though there's empty space instead of a brain and a heart and a stomach and you suppose that maybe there is. That there might as well be.

He is sallow and his eyes are closed. They used to be blue but now you wouldn't be surprised is they had changed to something more befitting of a dead man. Black or maybe grey, to match the suit they stuffed him in.

Laying there he looks more put together than he ever did in life.

He'd probably be pissed off about that, if he could see.

You hope he gets to see.

And you are second guessing yourself now, just a bit, just enough. In your head it feels like the death scene from Romeo and Juliet played in reverse. Both of you are already dead from the get-go.

Hanna excuses himself, Zombie had left ages ago already, and now you are alone. The cars are still moving forward without you.

You wonder if this kind of ennui is normal for a vampire or if you just got extra screwed on the deal. Not that you would have had a choice in it either way.

There is a sound from inside the parlor.

The woman who worked there had screamed. This is your cue.

When you enter the room you see it. It had worked after all.

His eyes are still blue after all.

They are blue and filled with the most hurt and confused expression you had ever seen on him. But there they are, and here you are and you are happy even though you're pretending not to be for his sake.

And he punches you, hard, right in the face. You fall harder, into a pew, and it hurts like hell but it doesn't matter because you were half-excepting it, half-hoping for it.

You are stammering:

I just...I just couldn't...

And he is not saying anything. He's rubbing at the mark on his neck and struggling to get his legs out from the half of the coffin that is closed and covered with tacky plastic flowers.

He doesn't look at you as he walks towards the door. You pull yourself up and follow him out.

He never could stay mad at you for long, anyway.

* * *

and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

-ee cummings

* * *

This is a stretch more depressing than what I usually write, but I not by a lot, I think. Sorry to be kind of a buzz kill, maybe, but it does have a some-what happy ending, I think. And, anyway, I had a really good time writing it so that's all that matters, to me, at least.

I also really enjoy being in Conrad's head. c:

Other than that I don't really have much to say about this fic but I do hope you enjoy.

-"-

So alternate interpretation: the last bit was all in Connie's head.

-"-

Also, unrelated: the weather here is going insane.


End file.
